Network of Champions – Page 4

Creating Connections on Membership Sites: a Professional Network or a Database?

Creating connections on membership sites helps brand and market your career.

THE TIME TO SET UP AN ONLINE NETWORK IS BEFORE YOU NEED IT.
As your career progresses, one of the choices you may need to make is how to connect effectively with people online.

Many people take an intuitive approach relative to where they are in their career.

However, waiting until you need a network to build it can leave you stranded when you most need support. From a career perspective, the time to develop your network is to spend a few minutes on a consistent basis reviewing and editing your professional profile and giving consideration to people you may want to add to your connections.

Viewing how you will use your network over the next five years can help you understand what type of network you want to develop.

THE PROFESSIONAL NETWORK
Do you want to limit your connections to people who can directly help your career? Then you want to create a professional network. You will want to be selective to target the people who can connect you with other people who can help you become more successful.

Your options may include questions like these questions:

Does the person share your values?
Does the person have connections with people you want for your connections?
Will the association of this person’s career with your career help you?
Is the person someone who can put you in contact with valuable and influential people?
Is the person someone who can mentor or advise you?

At the same time, you want the people you are selecting to be people who will see the value in connecting with you. Make each invitation individual and personally written for each connection. Express in the invitation that the person has experiences and successes that are the same as other people in your network.

THE PROFESSIONAL DATABASE
Do you want to be able to have immediate access to as many people as possible and yet control who can see your contacts? If so, then you are developing a professional database. You create a profile that promotes the idea that you are willing to accept invitations from anyone. You want to be an open networker and join groups that promote open networking.

An issue for developing an online database is controlling how much other members of the membership site can know about the people you have in your online list of contacts. As an open networker, you can still protect your database to a fairly large degree. Just adjust the privacy settings so that you alone can see who is in your network. Even with tens of thousands of contacts, you can block people from seeing your contacts.

One of the main differences between a professional network and an online database is a difference in property value. Professional networks have real commercial value to the person who has built the network. Said another way, you can sell databases.

SO WHAT’S THE POINT?
The point is that your view and uses of your network may change with the evolution of your career, yet as a professional you should include developing your online profile as part of your total career management system.

What have you found that works for you in the development of your online network?

Beyond LinkedIn

Today much focus is on networking through membership sites. Sometimes the most helpful people in your network are your friends or people you have met locally.

A friend of mine was working part-time in a hardware store while in college. One of the regular customers was a wealthy commercial property developer, who owned malls and high-rise office buildings. This developer liked what he saw in my friend and offered to put him into business as the owner of a hardware store in one of the developers new strip centers.

My friend accepted the offer and now owns two hardware stores that are in strip malls, which the developer owns.

A couple of decades later, the developer hired the son of the hardware store owner. The developer’s son and my friend’s son had become friends and the business relationship has continued to grow.

When you are creating a list of your network, remember to include the people you know locally.

Here are some suggestions just to get your mind working.

Elementary, middle, and high school friends
College friends
Friends of your parents
Parents of the friends of your child or your children
Friends or acquaintances from clubs, church, or associations
People who provide you with services
Relatives
Volunteer activities
Places where you shop

As you fill out the list, begin to organize the contact information on these people into a database or contact management system.

Name
Address
Phone numbers
Email address

You may already be using a contact manager. For a career move, you might continue to use the same system you have used. If you have no current personal system or if wish to create a separate system for your career, the free email services (Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail) provide data storage, calendars, and ways to include contact information on your contacts and methods for grouping your contacts based on the ways you would like to sort these.

Take a notepad with you when you get out of the house. Ideas may come to you as you see people at the athletic center or while doing volunteer work or even shopping.

When you speak with other people, try to remember to engage in discussions about them, their family, and their friends. Allow your mind to make free associations as you build your list of contacts.

Remember to give people your contact information as well. Let people know that you are available and to pass your contact information along to people who might want to help you make more connections.

Move beyond LinkedIn. Build a network of your contacts.

Professional Networking: Creating Credible Connection Invitations

LinkedIn is a business and career professional network. Credibility is very important for making connections and building your professional network on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has seven options for inviting people to connect with you. Each option has advantages in terms of creating credibility and ease of use. Here are the seven options.

Colleague: Requires you to choose a company
Classmate: Requires you to choose a school
We’ve done business together: Requires you to choose a company
Friend: No requirement
Groups: Requires you to pick a group for which you and the other person both have membership.
Other: Requires email address
I don’t know: Blocks you from connecting. Look back up through options that are available to you.

Options #1, #2, and #3 place a burden, albeit a small burden, on the contact you are inviting. After accepting your invitation, the person gets a request to add this company or school to the person’s profile.

LinkedIn requests that the person add information to their profile based on the company or school you have chosen.

Friend option #4 is the easiest to use and may contain the greatest risk to your credibility. Business people often think of each other as acquaintances or associates. If the person you are inviting does not even know your name, you are running an obvious risk of credibility. However, if the person is a genuine friend, you may have added a connection who does not expand your network but may offer opportunities to make other connections.

Groups offer easy connection features and can give you direct access to people who can help you with your business and your career by allowing group members to select an option for receiving messages from other group members.

Using this option is terrific for adding connections. Most group members select the option to allow other members to send them messages, thereby making themselves available to receive invitations from other group members.

Since in becoming a member of a group, you are connecting with people who have common interest with you, it naturally follows that inviting group members to connect through the group option results in a very high rate of invitation acceptance.

The “I don’t know” invitation option does serve as a reminder not to invite people to connect whom you do not know and encourages you to seek people who can most help you build your career and your business.

What ideas do you use to build credible invitations?

“The World’s Most Noble Headhunter”

Building Professional Relationships at Work and On The Web

The Fundamentals of Building Professional Relationships at Work and On The Web

Building a professional database is simple.
A database is not a network. It is a contact list.
Building a network of professional relationships takes time.
The best time to invest time in building these relationships is before the time that you will actually need them.

I have known people who have gotten fifteen to twenty years into their career before realizing that they had not developed a strong enough professional network to support their career.

IF YOU NEED A FRIEND, BECOME A FRIEND.

Friends become friends, because they have common interests. Listen to what people are saying about their families, their jobs, their hobbies, the books they read, the games they play, the sports teams they follow. Look for the common interests and ask them about what they think about the things that interests them. If you need a friend, become a friend.

People enjoy talking about things that are interesting to them. They become friends with people who will listen and add information that helps the conversation flow on those interests.

People enjoy hearing things that are consistent with their beliefs.

Friends seldom bond over disagreements. If you happen to have different views about things that a person likes, talk about the things you like in common. I have seen business relationships fall apart as easily over sports issues as financial issues.

WHEN ASKING FOR HELP, OFFER TO HELP

Offering to help people when you need help yourself can sometimes be difficult.

Yet the people you contact will more greatly appreciate your contacting them if you also offer to help them. You are looking to develop professional relationships not just build a database.

You are not going to play golf or go to a movie with everyone you know in business, but you do want people to see you as a person who has their interest at heart.

LINKEDIN: CONNECTIONS AND GROUPS

For now, I am going to focus on LinkedIn and come back to Facebook, Google, Twitter, and perhaps Tumblr later.

LinkedIn Connections: For most LinkedIn users, their connections are people they know. These LinkedIn members have developed professional relationships with these people. I have among my LinkedIn connections people with whom I have developed relationships recently. Others I have known over time.

I am sure that there are people for whom their LinkedIn connections database is a giant spam machine. My experience with LinkedIn is very good in this regard. I believe that LinkedIn has done a very skilful job of limiting spammers while allowing people to build fabulous contact files.

LinkedIn Groups: From my experience, LinkedIn groups are best used as a place to get help. Here is what I have seen to be the most effective use of these groups.

The Do’s

Do ask questions that engage people in a discussion.
Do offer answers to questions other people have asked.
Do compliment people or simply like ideas they have shared
Do post news or information that is specifically relevant to a group.

The Don’ts

Don’t post an article from your website just because you want exposure.
Don’t criticize or argue with people on the Internet.
Don’t get into religious or political discussions on a professional group forum.
Don’t say anything at all if you can’t say something nice.

LinkedIn Invitations: When you are inviting people to connect with you or to join your group, you might consider these additional ideas.

Do give specific positive reference to comments people have made in a group as a reason you are inviting them to connect with you.
Do include a genuine personal note to show how you would value the connection of the people you are inviting to join your network.

Sample invitation:

Addressee:
You have outstanding credentials in terms of where you have worked and the type of responsibilities you have had. I would like to add you to my professional network.
Thank you.
Best regards,
Your Name

Your Known Network

Today I so instinctively take the easy way to finding information and contacts. I go to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Job Boards, Business Directories, Google Search, and forget that the best network I have is the one made up of the people I already know.

The online resources are so powerful, so compelling, and so easy that I forget that the people I already know are my best network.

Contacting people I already know is so much more effective than contacting people who are new and taken from the online world. I have an established relationship. The people I already know will more likely trust me. They are more likely to be helpful. The bond is already established.

If you are looking to expand your contacts, start by making a list of people you have known over the years and ask yourself where you can find these people. For me, this task is easy, because I have been a consistent recorder of contacts for 30 years. At first, I used a Roll-a-Dex® for the hiring companies and a 5 X 8 file-card system for job seekers. When I first set up a computer-based contact system, I stumbled over the concept that I could simply combine the Roll-a-Dex® for hiring companies and the file-card system for job seekers into one database. Sorting clients alphabetically and sorting job seekers by geography and job level and then alphabetically would be such a breeze in a database.

There are many ways to track my contacts. There are online sites that are free, online sites that I can buy, local contact management systems for my computer, file sharing that allows me to tote my address lists wherever I go. The most important thing to remember is that my most valuable contacts are the people I have known all along: My Know Network.

“The World’s Noblest Headhunter”

Network, Even When There is no Apparent Reward

He had been unemployed for over a year. He told me that he had not had one interview in over a year, because there was nothing worth his time. When I pressed him as to what he meant by things that were worth his time, he explained that he had been an executive vice president and the jobs he was seeing were two or three levels lower.

I suggested that he might consider just getting out and meeting people. Be more open about taking interviews. Just suit up and get out to see if he might have some ideas for helping companies build their business.

In this case, the networking paid off. He received a call regarding a company that had managed to make its sales goals but was struggling to make money. He suggested that perhaps he could come in as a sort of sales manager on special assignment or contract employee. In six weeks, he called me to tell me that he was the executive vice president of sales of a Midwest food company.

All he had to do was get out and meet some people.

Working with Recruiters: The Different Types and What They Do

If you are working with recruiters, you will find it helpful to understand the relationship between the recruiter and the hiring company and the relationship between a recruiter and a potential employee.

Recruiter or Placement Agency

The companies that use recruiters to fill a position pay recruiters for their services. Hiring companies do not accept unsolicited resumes from recruiters. Therefore, all recruiters are working under contract, and they work on behalf of the hiring company. If you are a working with recruiter, you are valuable to that recruiter. The recruiter will not charge you a fee.

There is a different type of staffing firm called a placement agency. These agencies work on behalf of job seekers and may charge job seekers a fee for finding them a job. The distinction between a placement agency and a recruiter is that placement agencies find jobs for people, and recruiters find people for jobs.

Contingency Recruiter or Retained Recruiter
Sometimes, people try to explain the difference between contingency recruiters and retained recruiters in terms of the compensation. There was even a benchmark set at $100,000-a-year for a point where a person would rise above contingency recruiters and pass into the realm of retained recruiters. At that time, I had contracts for retained work under $100,000 a year and contracts for contingency work above $100,000 a year. My relationship to the applicant did not change based on these contracts. I had jobs to fill and needed people to fill them. At times, a recruiter may have some contracts that pay them a non-refundable advance payment (a retainer) for their services and have contracts for payment after the job has been filled. More recently, retained firms have also done contingency work (The Directory of Executive and Professional Recruiters).

In practice, how hiring companies pay a recruiter is not important to you as a potential employee. The contacts the recruiter has in relation to the type of contacts you need to further your career is important. Since contingency recruiters and retained recruiters both work under a contract and given that financial benchmarks are not that useful in the changing landscape of compensation, the best way to work with a recruiter is to help the recruiter understand your experience and the type of job you are seeking. If the recruiter has jobs that fit your experience, he has a network that is valuable to you. Typically, the sterling silver of retained search firms are conducting searches where the level of contact is with the board of directors and the level of search is for “C” level managers, that is, Chief Executive Officers, Chief Revenue Officers, and so forth. When people at that level of experience contact me, I refer them to Tom Snyder, who hired people from me when he was an executive in the CPG industry. Tom has placed over 50 C-level executives. The Chicago office of Spencer Stuart, where Tom works, is the most effective consumer goods executive staffing practice in the country.

You and the Recruiter

Recruiters hunt for people: they are, figuratively, headhunters. They get on the phone and call people. They email people. They research for prospects. They are looking for fits like ring sizes. Hiring companies pay recruiters for their skills in finding those fits. Applicants as a potential employees have value. They are the diamond ring. The hiring company is the ring buyer, the customer. The recruiter is the jeweler. He takes a measure of what will fit the hiring company. If recruiters do not have a fit in their jewelry case, they hunt for one by calling people in their network. They often look for rings that are not yet on the market. Therefore, whether the applicants are rings in the jewelry display case or ones who are not yet on the market, the applicants and the hiring companies have value to a recruiter. If recruiters have the network to fit the needs of the hiring companies and the experiences of the applicant, the recruiters have value to both based on that network.

Are you a card collector?

The first time I heard the expression “be a card collector,” I was not certain what the person meant. Collecting cards to follow sports figures or to trade in games had always been my idea of card collecting.

What I learned from a master at networking was that collecting business cards was part of the process of building a database and from there a professional network. I also learned from this person that asking for a business card was a way of showing an interest in another person and their business. It was a way of saying that the time you spent with them was worth your time.

I was at the Food Marketing Institute trade show a few years back. The line of people waiting for cabs could be 100 yards long. Just catching a cab could take an hour.

A woman I had met at the show asked if she could join me in line and share a cab. She and I were going the same direction.

I was standing in line alone between two groups. I was happy to have the company.

She was a former Procter & Gamble division manager who was at the show networking in an effort to get a new job. She was going the same direction as I was and asked if she could hop in line and split the fare.

She explained during the ride that she had made a huge mistake over her career. She had not built a network. For over a decade, she had believed that she would never work for another company and that building relationships outside of Procter & Gamble was a form of disloyalty. She made it a point to distance herself from people at other manufacturers, people who had left Procter & Gamble, and especially from corporate recruiters.

On the day that she and I shared the cab ride, she had left Procter and Gamble, gone to another company, and had left that second company. She was now unemployed and had few contacts who could help her.

She said that there was a certain irony in her sharing a ride with me, a corporate recruiter she would have avoided ten years earlier.

She said that being at that trade show and talking with the few people she did know, she realized that she had cut herself off from opportunities that were available to many of her peers who had done a better job of staying in touch with business associates throughout the industry. She was very talented and yet did not have a workable network. She had never collected cards.

Today there are many ways to collect cards. At trade shows, people pick up cards from vendors and competitors. On the Internet, it is fairly easy to build a network by joining professional groups that are ostensibly designed to provide helpful information. Around the office there are people you can always get to know better.

The person who told me to be a card collector many years earlier was a master at what bright Internet people (LinkedIn, Twitter, Google, Facebook)today have turned into huge enterprises: that is, the enterprises of helping people collect cards.